Which way forward for Palestinian liberation?

Which way forward for Palestinian liberation?
ON FEBRUARY 23 2010, Platypus hosted an event entitled Which Way Forward for Palestinian Liberation? in which Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism and frequent commentator on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and Hussein Ibish, political analyst and senior fellow at The American Task Force on Palestine, answered questions posed by Richard Rubin of Platypus. An audience question and answer session followed. Below is an edited transcript of the event. The Platypus Review encourages readers to listen to the full audio of the event, available online at the above link. [Read More]

Is the funeral for the wrong corpse?

Is the funeral for the wrong corpse?
_HAL FOSTER IS a prominent critic and art historian who contributes regularly to Artforum, New Left Review*, and The Nation. He is also an editor of October. In the fall of 2009, he sent out a questionnaire to 70 critics and curators, asking them what “contemporary” means today. Foster notes that the term “contemporary” is not new, but that “What is new is the sense that, in its very heterogeneity, much present practice seems to float free of historical determination, conceptual definition, and critical judgment. [Read More]

Book Review: Robert Fitch, _Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise_

Book Review: Robert Fitch, _Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise_
New York: PublicAffairs, 2006 ONE HAS TO ADMIRE THEIR PERSISTENCE. Labor Notes, the flagship journal of the domestic labor Left, professes itself to be “the voice of union activists who want to put the movement back into the labor movement.” Though stylistically about as riveting as the phonebook, for more than three difficult decades Labor Notes has critically observed and recorded organized labor’s endemic corruption, democratic shortcomings, and gross ineptitude in organizing workers in the private sector, where today only 7. [Read More]